In this three-hour workshop, participants are invited to hold tension in their bodies and redirect energy into collaborative weaving.
“絲” (the traditional Chinese character for “silk”) is a homonym of “撕,” which evokes the act of tearing apart, yet also suggests re-construction and binding of cloth. This duality ties into the workshop’s focus: a meditative inquiry into object memory, ancestry, and heritage, using back strap looms tethered to one another as a repetitive vehicle to elicit intimate reflections around femininity, care, and labour.
In this three-hour workshop, participants are invited to hold tension in their bodies and redirect energy into anchoring themselves within the actions and movements of weaving. They will collaboratively weave using cotton thread and various found objects on a loom frame, and explore the intersections of weaving, collective making, and meditation, attuned to themes of resilience and healing.
This event is free and open to all.
Xuan Yeo is a Singaporean-Malaysian textile artist whose practice(s) aim to activate meditative environments that underscore the extreme labour-intensiveness of their making. Through hand-woven textiles, perfumery, and installation, her work focuses on material origin and her matrilineal heritage, seeing through processes in karmic cycles and memory.
She is also coproducer of a women’s textile collective known as Silkworm, facilitating community collaborations and workshops, as well as teaches various textile crafts ranging from crochet to weaving, having worked with Synonym Lab, Greenwich Libraries, A Particular Reality, Thames-Side Studios, Goldsmiths Centre of Contemporary Art, Constance Howard Gallery, and Barbican Arts Group Trust.
This workshop has been curated by @design_school_cliche in response to Chapter IV: Care and Kinship of Mimosa House’s exhibition transfeminisms: a major survey touring show, that brings to light a multiplicity of urgent, pressing and ongoing issues faced by women, queer and trans people across the globe.